


blossom beautifully, dangerously, loudly

by emmaofmisthaven



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Homophobic Language, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-10-09 18:35:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10418532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmaofmisthaven/pseuds/emmaofmisthaven
Summary: John is only eight, missing teeth and small stutter and a passion for planes, but old enough to know there are some things he better keep for himself.Some things he can never say out loud.





	

**Author's Note:**

> so.... that's me dipping my toes into Hamilton fics? I'm so not used to writing m/m tbh and I started this after watching Moonlight, which...  
> just a queer girl dealing with her shit family through fictional characters, the usual
> 
> (title from Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur)

8.

He knows he’s different.

Not just because of the freckles on his face like little paint stains he can never wipe off, no matter how much he scrubs. Not just because of his curly hair and brown skin, in a sea of white children. Not just the books he can never put down, reading until his eyes go blurry. Not just the fights and the bruises and the scratches, that have his teachers say he has anger issues.

But because his heart starts racing when little Arthur sits next to him during reading time. Blond hair falling in front of blue eyes and a missing tooth, the cutest boy John has ever seen. Girls are icky, too busy playing with dolls for John to care about them. His father laughs and says it will change soon. His mother smiles kindly.

But girls are icky, and little Arthur is not.

John knows better than to tell his parents, has heard the words his father say when he reads the news, when yet another State passes a law about marriage. John is only eight, missing teeth and small stutter and a passion for planes, but old enough to know there are some things he better keep for himself.

Some things he can never say out loud.

 

16.

His knuckles hurt, bruised and bloody from yet another punch; knuckles meet jaw in a crunching noise. The guy facing him spits on the floor, more blood than saliva, before pointing a finger at him. The slur is on his tongue before John has time to get ready, and then a threat. Not that it surprises John -- bigots and bullies hardly surprise him these days, too predictable in the way they act around him.

An insult, tripping him in the hallway, pushing him against the lockers.

His ribs still hurt a little from last week, but his skin is tougher now, and so is his mind. He got quite good at hiding the bruises and finding explanations about all the fights. He’s just that kind of a boy, his father says proudly, gotta teach ‘em a lesson. His father has no idea, and John lets him believe it’s just the anger talking, just some alpha male bullshit.

Better than the truth, right?

A teacher separates them before another punch can be thrown, sending John to his calculus class with a detention and a lecture. Nobody ever questions it; nobody ever cares enough to notice that one kid getting bullied by all the other boys, if only because he fights back. Maybe he should wear glasses and act like the nerd he is, maybe then they would notice something is wrong. But then the school would call his parents with a whole different kind of talk, and John can’t have that. Only a year and a half left before college. He can last this long, and then he’ll move on campus and away from prying eyes.

He can do that.

 

…

 

Martha comes to him one day during lunch break.

She stands out as much as he does, with her dark skin and frizzy hair. Like she isn’t supposed to belong there, in this white town with all those white kids and their white thoughts. She smiles at him and sits by his side, drinking from her juice box before her eyes find his again.

“Do you want to go out this weekend?”

John almost chokes on his fries, swallowing with difficulty before he washes it down with a gulp of water. He stares at her, eyes wides, for long seconds, before he’s able to croak a “Excuse me?”

She shrugs. “Maybe it would stop them. If you were dating.”

“If I was dating a girl,” he finishes for her.

Martha shrugs again, unapologetic in her proposal. John doesn’t know what to think of it -- of course, it would solve a few of his problems, but his life is enough of a mess, enough of a lie as it is. He doesn’t want to pretend he cares about some girl just so his hemoglobin won’t find its way to the pavement.

Or perhaps it would only make things worse, and people will see right through the bullshit and call her a beard, and attack her on top of punching John. He can take it; he can’t ask a girl to fight his battles for him. This is just madness.

So he shakes his head. “No, thanks.”

She pouts at him, sadly. “I’m just tired of feeling useless,” she admits. “I don’t know what to do.”

Which is… nice, he guesses? Nobody has ever been nice to him about it, avoiding him like the plague, like they will catch whatever he has if they stand too close. He wants to cough his gayness in their faces and see how they react. Which probably doesn’t help with his anger management issues, but then again. Not his fault people are morons.

“Thank you though,” he tells Martha, as sincere as he can. “I appreciate it.”

She smiles at him, and squeezes his hand, before sipping from her juice box again.

 

…

 

His father is sitting in the leather armchair when John comes home, only one lamp switched on, and it’s so dramatic that John wants to laugh and ask who’s dead. But his father also has this look on his face, the one that tells John there is nothing to laugh about and that something is definitely off.

“‘Sup, Pop?”

His father folds his arms on his chest, and John suddenly feels self-conscious enough to start fidgeting. His hands turn into fists in the pockets of his jeans, and he forces himself to stand still, chin high. Don’t show them your weaknesses, don’t show the fear in your eyes.

“Your English teacher called,” his father says, cold. “Good kid, good grades, so sad that he keeps getting bullied for who he is…”

John swears under his breath, and screams internally.

Nice new teacher -- fresh out of college, pretty and young and way too invested in her students’ well-being for her own good. John can’t really blame her for doing her job, but he just wishes she had turned a blind eye on him like everybody else at school. He’s fine with everyone pretending not to see the problem, because there is no problem to begin with.

“And I told her, no you got it wrong, because there’s no way my son is a damn  _ fagot _ .”

John tenses at the slur spat in his face, his shoulders jolting a little. Just a little, but still enough for his father to notice. Still enough for his father to get the answer he needs even with the verbal affirmation. Denying it would be useless, at this point, and John’s entire body and mind scream one word at him.

Run.

Because his father has that look in his eyes, like when his football team just lose and he’s one beer too far into madness. Like earlier this year when Obama won and he started cursing the entire universe for letting a black man into the White House.

(Sometimes, John wonders if his father remembers he married a Latina woman.)

(Often, he wonders how his mother could pick such a monster of a husband.)

His father stands up, slow, threatening, and John’s instincts kick in before his brain has time to react. He’s already at the door when his father start yelling, already around the corner when his father follows him outside.

He runs until his lungs burn, until his eyes are blurry, until he has to stop because he’s choking on his own sobs and can’t catch his breath. Everything hurts -- his muscles, his heart, his lungs, his fucking mind. Everything hurts, and hurts, and hurts.

He takes his phone out, and calls Martha.

Her parents let him crash on their couch, just for one night.

 

23.

“Mom, we’re out of milk.” He closes the fridge with his shoulder, and sighs. “Again.”

He gets out of the kitchen, only to find his mother snoring on their too small couch. She’s still wearing her work uniform, red name tag pinned on her white shirt, hair coming out of her ponytail and purple bags under her eyes. John smiles softly as he grabs a blanket and throws it over her sleeping body. She doesn’t move, not even when he drops a kiss on her forehead, too exhausted to react.

It takes John five minutes to go downstairs to the bodega around the corner, buy a bottle of milk, and come back up. Abuela Sanchez stops him in the hallway, but he’s too tired for him to understand anything she is saying right now. Which -- it’s hard, sometimes. He learnt French in school, and now he finds himself in the barrio, not knowing a word of Spanish and not knowing how to blend it.

His mother is still asleep when he comes back, will be until her phone wakes her up for her night shift. John moves to his bedroom, changes out of his work clothes and into something a little bit more comfortable, before he checks his wallet. Only two crumpled tens and a bunch of coins, just enough to make it through the night but not much else. Perhaps he can even convince Herc to buy the first round, if he plays his cards right.

Herc who’s already at the bar when John shows up, Laf following a few minutes later. The Frenchman is in a good mood, and it takes very little probing before John finds himself with one beer in front of him, then a second one. They laugh easily, sharing stories and jokes and talking with other people around them. The good kind of night, a buzz in John’s head from the drinking and the smiling.

And then--

“Since when does Burr have friends?”

Smirking at Laf’s jab, John turns his head to the front door just in time to see Aaron Burr entering the room. His usual fake smile hiding discontent is plastered on his lips, and the most handsome guy John has ever seen is following him like a lot puppy. John’s breath catches in his throat, released in a small gasp when Herc elbows him.

“Seen anything you like?”

John rolls his eyes.

 

…

 

Philip Schuyler throws a gala to raise funds for Washington’s campaign in the middle of December, and the whole gang is invited.

Herc holds John’s hair back as he pukes his tears and vodka and sobs into the bowl of a too white, too expensive toilet. He wills the thoughts away but they come back to haunt him, again and again. The vodka was to forget, and he choked on it until he was choking on his own tears, until he had no choice but to run to the closest bathroom and to empty his stomach. Herc’s hand is warm on his back, but it doesn’t change anything.

His mind can only think of Eliza and Alex and Alex and Alex and Alex.

 

24.

The punch lands before John even has time to think over his own actions. Crushing noise of knuckles against nose. Electricity jolting up his arm as he shakes his hand. Charles Lee on the floor, hands to his bleeding face.

John is about to land a second one when Herc pulls him away. His hand still hurts, and with it his head -- he hasn't fought in years, the adrenaline of it all rushing back to his brain and leaving him almost giddy. He's missed it. The fight, the blood, the power. 

“You happy now?” Lafayette asks him with no small amount of sarcasm.

“Yes.”

Alex’s lips twitch a little, like he's fighting back a laugh, and John’s heart grows three times bigger. It beats faster, too, until it misses a beat because…

“What is the meaning of this?”

Washington’s body towers over Charles Lee, still down and whimpering like a baby, and John forgets about giddiness and muffled laughs and his throbbing hand. 

Still worth it.

 

…

 

His legs dangle in the emptiness beneath him, leaning against the staircase’s railing with one beer in his hand. Alex sits next to him, mirrors his position, and sips from his own bottle every now and then. Even from the sixth floor, they can hear the music coming from the hairdresser downstairs, barrio living to the rhythm of salsa and r’n’b and whatever else is playing on the radio. It feels peaceful, the music and the sunset and Alex solid by his side. 

“Eliza and I broke up,” Alex says at some point.

John forces himself not to turn around, not to stare. He takes a sip of lukewarm beer, and asks, “How so?”

“She said that my love was like a volcano, that it was brewing inside me until it erupted and consumed everything around it, and burnt our relationship to the ground.”

John raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Eliza didn't say that.”

Alex glances his way, looks in front of him, then glances again. “She said I was full of shit,” he admits, and John snorts. Loudly. “But the burning part was implied.”

“Sure it was.” John grins, lips against the neck of his beer bottle. Alex’s elbow finds its way to his ribs, which only makes him laugh.

He grins to himself, his happiness turning into something else. For months now he had been ignoring the green-eyed monster in the corner of his mind, because it was not fair to either Alex nor Eliza. Alex, because he deserves happiness. Eliza, because John couldn't hate her no matter how hard he tried. She was too kind, too good for him to hate her. Which was the worse part. It would have made his life easier if she was a bitch, if his feelings were validated. 

He feels lighter now. Which is probably why he asks, “So you’re single now?”

For confirmation.

Just to be sure.

Nothing else.

Alex doesn’t reply immediately, which is already unusual as it is. And then John finds himself counting the seconds, silence stretching between them almost uncomfortably. Alex isn’t the silent time, filling the room with his words and his presence. Something John admires a lot, him who can never put his thoughts into words, him who is more actions than speeches. He can always rely on Alex to make the conversation, to talk at him instead of with him.

And then Alex turns his head to look at him, a smile ghosting on his lips. “No,” he replies, so candidly it makes John frown at first.

“Wha--”

But he doesn’t get to finish his question, because Alex’s lips are on his, the kiss tentative until it isn’t, until it turns bruising and feverish, until John’s shoulder is pressed at a weird angle against the banister and his thoughts are Alex and Alex and Alex.

“No, I guess not,” he says between kisses, breathless.

Alex only chuckles, and kisses him, and kisses him.


End file.
